By Francisco Cruz
During the 1980s, far from their lands of origin, traditional music from around the world — fused with electroacoustic and electronic sonorities — underwent a profound transformation that gave birth to a new music, resolutely polymorphic. In order to market it more effectively, the music industry named it "world music," before it was later reinvented under the name Sono Mondiale.
From that point on, musicians from distant countries gained an international recognition and popularity that had previously been unimaginable. This phenomenon enabled the discovery of a teeming universe of fascinating music and fostered unprecedented encounters between artists from different latitudes and varied backgrounds. The most fertile consequence of this progressive hybridization was, beyond national or continental identities, the emergence of a vast constellation of unclassifiable music — music without labels, in keeping with the way musicians themselves define their art: "we play music."
FROM THE PERIPHERY TO THE CENTER OF THE WORLD
The twentieth century was the era of the development and global expansion of the music industry. In a dual movement, at unequal speeds, it spread outward from the industrial epicenters — first the United States, then England and other European countries — toward the rest of the world, in a progression that accelerated exponentially after the end of the Second World War. This movement then spread far more slowly from the global "sonic periphery" back toward the centers of industrial production. This development was driven in part by the remarkable work of discovery and collection carried out by ethnomusicologists and seekers of "exotic" sounds — among whom Alan Lomax and Deben Bhattacharya stand as key references — and also by the gradual migration of musicians from distant countries (notably former colonies) toward the industrialized world.
In the early 1970s, the international music market was overwhelmingly dominated by the distribution and commercialization of American and European music across the local markets of the developing world. International variety, rock, and — to a lesser extent — funk and jazz dominated radio airwaves, television screens, and above all the charts. Conversely, the presence of "extra-Western" music on the American or European market was virtually nonexistent.
JAZZ AND ROCK OPEN THE DOOR
It was thanks to the curiosity and intelligence of certain rock and jazz musicians — notably Anglo-Saxon and American — that remarkable musicians from distant countries began to be recorded and distributed in the industrialized world. Musicians such as Robert Plant and Paul Simon, Don Cherry and John McLaughlin, nudged open the doors of multinational companies. Records by musicians from around the world began to circulate beyond the local markets where they had already achieved great renown. This opening also inspired adventurous ensembles such as the Dutch group The Ex, whose collaborations with Ethiopian musicians and other musical traditions helped widen the dialogue between independent rock and world music.
These "apparent contradictions" of the music industry — between the need for novelty and commercial risk-taking — together with the technological development of musical materials, contributed to the adoption of new electric (analogue) instruments, as the sound of orchestras, bands, and other ensembles became electroacoustic across virtually every latitude. Enlightened and innovative musicians from distant countries began fusing national popular music — traditional or folk — with imported rock and jazz from the United States and Europe. New sounds emerged everywhere in the world. The end of certain transcontinental wars and the establishment of new dictatorships then triggered fresh waves of migration among artists — primarily musicians — toward the industrialized countries, and by the 1980s, the sound of the world had completely changed.
FROM FOLKLORE TO WORLD MUSIC
On the international market, a greater place was carved out for popular music from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, distributed by independent labels — Buda Musique and Iris Music in France deserve special mention. Then other labels were created specifically to produce, record, and distribute these sounds from elsewhere; the most important were Real World and Luaka Bop, founded respectively by rock musicians Peter Gabriel and David Byrne. Subsequently, recognizing the enormous diversity and commercial potential this represented, the major music multinationals created their own "world" departments.
In parallel, the technological shift toward digital electronics and the emergence of synthesizers, compressors, emulators, and other devices for transforming acoustic sounds triggered a genuine revolution in the treatment of musical material. These new "instruments" — first integrated into experimental electronic music and rock, then into jazz and pop — eventually came to be associated with the sonorities of ancestral and folk instruments as well.
Far from their lands of origin, traditional music fused with electroacoustic and electronic textures underwent a profound transformation, becoming a new music — absolutely polymorphic. To better sell it, it was named "world music," a generic label translated as musique du monde (a term some wished to reserve for acoustic traditional music) and later recast — in Paris, once the epicenter of world music — as Sono Mondiale. An elite of enlightened producers and journalists (in France and other European countries) played an important role in discovering, raising awareness of, and disseminating these new sounds, through radio, the written press, and the artistic direction of certain festivals — among them RKK, Rémy Kolpa Kopoul, producer at Radio Nova and programmer of the Fiesta festival in Sète, with whom you can get acquainted in "L'Improbable Portrait" on Qwest TV. This spirit of discovery is also reflected in several documentaries devoted to world music, such as Get on Dakar!, Tambours de Tokyo, and Bardes de Gengis Khan, which testify to the vitality of musical traditions often unknown to the broader Western public.
AFTER FASCINATION, HYBRIDIZATION NORMALIZED
Musicians from distant countries gained a recognition and international popularity previously unheard of. Toward the end of the twentieth century and at the dawn of the new millennium, singers such as the Senegalese Youssou N'Dour, the Brazilian Caetano Veloso, the Pakistani Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Algerian Khaled, and hundreds of other musicians from around the world were filling Europe's most prestigious concert halls. For two decades, this music enjoyed a success that exceeded even the most optimistic projections. It opened up a limitless world of fascinating music, and generated unprecedented encounters between musicians from diverse latitudes and different artistic contexts — the Argentine musician Melingo, who moved from rock to tango, or the Nantes-born group Orange Blossom, which brings together musicians of various origins, are good examples. Collaborations such as those of Taraf de Haïdouks & Kočani Orkestar particularly embodied this period of ferment, as Balkan Roma traditions reached new international audiences through festivals and tours across the world. Within this dynamic, figures such as Manitas de Plata also contributed to popularizing musical expressions rooted in Gypsy traditions, making them accessible to an international public well beyond their original contexts.
Arguably the finest consequence of this progressive hybridization is the creation of a vast constellation of unclassifiable music — as was that of the group Shakti, the trio Codona, or the French trio Hadouk. One might also include in this lineage a trajectory like that of Olivier Ker Ourio, a harmonica player whose work is rooted in a jazz tradition open to multiple influences. Nevertheless, hybridization also generated a kind of "cultural fashion" which, when steered by administrators with no genuine musical knowledge, ended up trivializing the concept — conflating truly good music from elsewhere, music with solid cultural foundations and strong artistic development, with products dressed up in exotic colors for easy sale. And if, at the height of its evolution, this music was a way to "travel without a passport," today many world musicians are barred from travel and denied visas, while audio streaming platforms fail to put them forward or compensate them at their true worth.
By Francisco Cruz